Abraham Lincoln's Argument Analysis

Based on both of the readings, Abraham Lincoln has the more persuasive argument. He starts off by stating that the writing itself is very broad and therefore does not limit the Declaration to any one group of people, but rather everyone in the country as a whole. Even though Thomas Jefferson was for state independence, Douglas’ argument is not very concrete in the fact that allowing for states to choose whether or not they should be a slave or free state would start a war that Abraham Lincoln wanted to start. One of Lincoln’s strongest arguments that was in response to Douglas was that there should not be a war to begin with since the entire concept of slavery is wrong. The United States was one of the last western countries to abolish slavery because it was thought to be a moral wrong. Lincoln in his speech said, “they look upon it as being a moral, social

Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence represented slave states themselves, and even though in an originalist approach to the Declaration slaves and women may have not been considered as equals which is what Douglas states, but in the approach that Lincoln takes in his speeches men can refer to the humankind as a whole. In the Law of Nature everyone is equal which becomes chaos. When infants are born they also have no choice as to who they are in their life, they are all created equally. Therefore what makes one group of people more important than others? This is the point that Lincoln makes that Douglas cannot fight against. Douglas never states that slavery is wrong, even though he clearly states being from Illinois that they are not a slave state. In this situation he even makes it seem as if he supports something that if the roles were reversed, if he had been born with darker skin rather than a shade of white he would have had an entirely different view